“These are, high, high, highly intelligent creatures,” said conservation biologist Reese Halter.1
Halter was speaking of the fascinating bee. Bees are already famous regarding their ability to communicate with other bees through complex dancing routines. Halter’s team also found that bees have puzzle-solving abilities. In 2006, scientists were amazed to discover that bees have a biological clock. They described it as, “An endogenous, physiological mechanism, whose exact nature has not been determined, that keeps time independently of external events.”2 It is actually more similar to humans than to insects.3

God designed bees with a brain the size of a grass seed, and yet they are quite intelligent. “Despite their tiny brains bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behavior,” said Dr. Nigel Raine, from Royal Holloway’s school of biological sciences at the University of London.4 The brain of the bee is composed of a mere one million neurons (nerve cells), compared to the approximately 86 billion neurons of a three-pound human brain. Entomologists are realizing that more brain size does not necessarily mean more intelligence. The answer may instead lie in the neural circuits, specifically the circuits’ interconnectivity and modularity.5 In other words, this demonstrates exquisite and precise design (Romans 1:20), the opposite of evolution’s time and chance.

Bees continue to astound scientists when tested for cognitive abilities in the lab.

For example, the bees can learn to slide or lift caps, then subsequently push balls of escalating weight to access the reward. When the researchers put the bees who knew how to solve the puzzle in a hive with naïve bees, they somehow went on to communicate the solution to their unlearned kinfolk.6

Entomologists recently discovered that bees have a capacity to discriminate numbers. “Honeybees can identify a piece of paper with zero dots as ‘less than’ a paper with a few dots.”7 It has always been assumed that what separates man from the animal world (among other things) is an understanding of the abstract concept of “zero.” But Howard and his team have now shown that untrained honey bees have an understanding of an “empty set.” The authors stated, “Bees demonstrated an understanding that parallels animals such as the African grey parrot, nonhuman primates, and even preschool children.”

Loukola and his team concluded that the learning ability of bees is extraordinary.